Complementary but neglected: analysing collection care and the state of private environmental archives in Zimbabwe using the Boulton Atlantica Foundation

Zimbabwe’s colonial and postcolonial governance systems provided generous space for the participation of individuals and private organizations in the management of the environment. In 1959, W. Rudyerd Boulton, a museum ornithologist from America established the Atlantica Foundation near Harare (then called Salisbury) later known as the Boulton Atlantica Foundation (BAF). The Foundation received its funding mostly from the USA (with CIA links) and became one of the earliest successful private institutions and ‘ecological research stations’ in the country and the region. This article uses the Boulton Atlantica Foundation as an entry point to address the documentation of small creatures such as birds and butterflies and the ultimate creation of historic collections or private archives. The Boulton Atlantica Foundation provides a template for understanding the complex nature of the creation and care of archival collections as well as the politics of their administration. It puts forward the argument that all archives are extensions of power and authority and that archives are not mere sources of information but active agents of global power systems. Environmental projects have remained outstandingly subtle platforms for the display of global powers. The article also seeks to put at the core of its analysis the human character and interests of founding persons as critical to collection development, care and eventualities; it aims to provide more insights into the uses or abuses of all archives and to show how postmodern analysis might unravel new insights into colonial collections.